Where The Wild Roses Grow
by Gray Doll
Summary: She almost smiles at the thought – Red Riding Hood and her lover running from the big, bad wolf. / AU


**Notes / Warnings: Well, this one's particularly dark, people, so feel free to skip it if it's not your cup of tea. Guess what - Red John's alive and well in this (and you get to choose who he is, as well, that's all up to you - it could be your favorite actor). Also, a huge thank you to the wonderful clairebare for helping me out with this!  
**

* * *

There is something horrible about a flower;  
This, broken in my hand, is one of those  
He threw it in just now; it will not live another hour;  
There are thousands more; you do not miss a rose.  
- '_In Nunhead Cemetery_', Charlotte Mew

* * *

**Where The Wild Roses Grow**

She sees him before he sees her.

Police sirens blare all around them, muffling the clamor of the officers as they stream through the unhinged door as one, and the hushed voices of the neighbors that watch from the balconies, their stares questioning and apprehensive.

His eyes tell her the story as if he were speaking the words.

The sea in them is stormy and wild, and she knows it can only mean one thing. He stands in the middle of the dark and humid cellar, still and broken as though carved out of glass splinters. His hand is clenched around his other arm, which he holds close to his chest, as though protecting an inner flame from dying out. Watching him makes her heart miss a beat and her legs tremble as she steps fully inside the basement, hearing the hurried footfalls of the SWAT men behind her they descend the creaking stairs.

His shirt is soaked with blood.

Her eyes search his face, before coming to rest on the body lying in a pool of crimson at his feet. And she doesn't know whether she should sigh with relief of cry out in terror. Her eye catches the lamplight reflected on a still bare sliver of steel, and that's when she notices the blade, curved and glistening with blood.

Her breath catches in her throat when he looks up at her, his lips a tight line as his gaze locks with hers. Darkened blue boring into emerald green, and she wants to throw her arms around him and never let go.

"It's over," he says, his voice coarse and strained. He swallows, averting his gaze from her to the lifeless body on the floor, then back to her. "It's done."

When the SWAT members and the FBI agents charge in, she is consumed by a sudden impulse to drag him away from the scene and keep him out of their reach, protect him from their eyes and keep him safe.

Of course, she doesn't do any of those things.

He remains eerily calm as they twist his arms behind his back, cuff his wrists and recite his legal rights. He keeps his head held up as they lead him up the wooden stairs, and doesn't spare the forensics a glance as the men rush inside the basement and attack the dead body like flies, pens and notepads ready in their hands.

His expression is impassive, nonchalant. But she can still see his eyes, turbulent and filled with a thousand emotions she knows he will never address. When they are finally outside, the sirens have finally ceased and most of the onlookers are back inside their houses.

His eyes search hers, and they're suddenly close enough to touch; standing outside a black SUV that will lead him to a prison cell (not for the first time). And he smiles.

"Don't worry, Lisbon," he says softly, and she can't help but chuckle – a bitter sound filling the space between them.

"You're going to jail," she says, as if trying to explain something particularly simple to a particularly stubborn child. "Why couldn't you just wait?"

He sighs. "You knew what was going to happen when I found Red John."

She shakes her head and folds her arms tightly about her chest. "I don't know if you'll get away with it this time."

"Meh." He gives a shrug, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "It doesn't really matter now."

There it is again. His good old egoistic, childish self. "So nothing else matters to you now that you've had your revenge?" she asks furiously, her voice a venomous hiss. "Don't I matter to you?"

He looks as if she's struck him, blinking his blue eyes in shock. "Of course you do," he softly murmurs. "I... Lisbon, please don't say such things. You know there's nothing I can do about it now."

He sounds sorrowful. Sincere. And she wants to believe him, she wants it so much it hurts.

"You could have waited," she snaps. "You could have told me about your plan. You could have-"

"I know," he says, his voice barely above a whisper. "I'm sorry."

He draws a long, shuddering breath, his facade of total calmness all but slipping away. "Lisbon, I – I want you to know that I never meant to hurt you. I mean what I say, and I-"

He never finishes his sentence, for an FBI agent intervenes and orders him inside the vehicle, leaving Lisbon to stare at the car that takes him away from her, for what she fears will be the last time. Tears well in her eyes, and she wipes them away with an angry hand, averting her gaze from the now empty road and stomping off to her own car.

It shouldn't come as a surprise when, a week later, Patrick Jane is declared not guilty and is back at her side, flashing her his charming smiles that can stop traffic and eating fudge sundaes with her on the CBI rooftop.

* * *

She's standing in the threshold, eyes anxiously flickering over her shoulder – but, thankfully, Jane's nowhere to be seen. She wonders if he's awake and waiting for her to come back to bed, or still soundly asleep (a free man's bliss).

She picks up the single red rose from where it's left on the doorstep, and closes the door behind her as she steps out of the house. It's been almost a year since that fateful night, and she's received more than two hundred roses since the day she first slept with Jane.

At first, she'd thought it was him – expressing his feelings for her without having to say the words, or maybe just wanting to be romantic and make her blush and giggle like a schoolgirl. She didn't question him about it, preferring to watch his reaction as she carefully tucked the roses in a bud vase, one after another.

She had expected a grin, a laugh, a playful remark. But instead, she'd only received a questioning look and a firm denial when she told him they were the flowers he sent her.

She'd eventually managed to dispel his suspicions by convincing VanPelt and Rigsby to 'admit' it was they who had sent the roses, as a means of congratulating them for their new life together. And he had returned to his cheery self (a little too quickly, for Jane was now only too willing to believe everything had returned to normal, wanting to put his past behind him), and she couldn't sleep at night, tossing and turning in her bed until the break of dawn.

Now she makes sure Jane never sees the flowers.

When she returns to her house, she throws the rose in the dustbin and draws another vertical line on her notepad. Then, she counts.

Two hundred and eighty four lines.

Two hundred and eighty four blood red roses.

And it's hell all over again.

When he calls her that night, she surprises herself with how calmly she replies to his questions, how even her voice sounds when she asks him some of her own, how conversational the tone of their brief exchange is. Her hand trembles when she hangs up, and she quickly dials another number, one she has come to know by heart.

"Jane," she says urgently (wanting more than anything else to just tell him), but then she realizes her mistake and forces herself to sound pleasant. "We haven't gone out for dinner in a really long while."

She can almost feel him grin, and he gives her the answer she wants. "Don't you worry Lisbon, everything's taken care of. I know this perfect little restaurant..."

She knows she must tell him. Tonight, at dinner. He must know.

But it will break him, and she can't go through it all again.

So she remains silent.

She continues to act exactly as she had over these long months since the orchestrated death of the man who was no-one to her (no-one to Red John) and everyone to Jane. She is gentle, compassionate and supporting. She smiles when Jane suggests they take a vacation together, and shares his newfound happiness and freedom the best she can. She hugs and kisses him, and rejoices at the new life filled with possibilities he promises they will lead.

She's never been a good actress, or at least that's what he's told her. She's fooling him now, and he doesn't even suspect it. And she hates having to do it - hates every second of it.

But deep within, she is desperate for an escape. She does not want to right her wrongs or condemn whatever love she has left. She wants to be free of the lies and the hypocrisy and the twisted, faded face she sees in the mirror.

She will die, that is all the hope she has left. She will die, either at her hand, a criminal's, or at the man's who still roams free, and then she will no longer be desperate or have to recall her sins and the desecration of what she once held dear. So she acts, waiting for the moment when she will finally pay her dues.

But if she's going to hell, she will at least try to take more people down with her.

* * *

"You killed them," she chokes out, her vision blurry and her cheeks flushed crimson from the biting cold.

She's seeing them die right before her eyes – Grace, a crumpled body buried underneath the snow, her hair a copper halo around her pale face. And Wayne, holding her hand, looking almost peaceful in death, seemingly happy to be lying next to her.

She would probably think it's poetic, if it wasn't so horrible.

She blinks her green eyes and shakes her head. It doesn't take a genius to know there's hypnotism coming unglued in her mind.

It's an hour past midnight, and they've stopped outside Los Angeles.

A lump rises in her throat, and her fists beat against the side of the car; nails leave scratches on the glass of the window and the leather casing around it.

He looks at her calmly, and she can't tell if it's amusement or irritation that makes his lip curl at the sight of her screaming at him and trying to get out of the car.

He eventually opens the door and she scrambles outside – he's in front of her before she's even started speaking. He clutches her, hands gripping her arms tight, and she struggles to break free from his grasp (but she's forgotten how to do that). She is at once a lost girl and a rabid monster.

And she's just found her senses again.

She tries to kick him, and he holds her still. She tries to bite him and he hits her, shaking his head as she falls to the concrete road. Tears are streaming down her cheeks when she looks up at him, tears of anger and despair.

"I hate you," she hisses, but instead of talking he crouches down beside her, his eyes finding hers. "I fucking hate you."

This time, he chuckles. "That's not what you were saying these last two months," he says airily, and she wants to slap that crooked smile off his face.

"You – you had hypnotized me." It all comes rushing back – every word, every touch, every color, and she wants to vomit. A whole year had passed since the wrong man died yet again (she'd received a blood red rose for every day of the year), and she'd decided she couldn't just sit back and allow this. She'd decided to go after him.

And everything had gone to hell.

Two months. Two months she'd spent with him, yelling, crying, fighting, and eventually submitting, her mind surrendering to his masterful ministrations without a fight.

She tries to get to her feet but her body feels abnormally heavy (even though she's sure she's lost way too much weight lately) and her limbs refuse to cooperate.

He tilts his head to the side. Arches an eyebrow. "You came to me of your own free will," he reminds her as snow starts to fall around them – she wonders if it was always falling and she simply hadn't noticed.

Despite her confusion and frustration and grief, she laughs. "To kill you," she says, brushing a loose strand of dark hair away from her face.

"But things didn't go according to plan, did they?" He leans forward, gaslight reflected in his dark brown eyes and snowflakes caught in his hair. "And what are you going to tell your boyfriend now?"

This time she's able to stand up, although with great difficulty. She realizes she has no more tears to shed, no more strength to shout and scream. "That's none of your business."

It's his turn to laugh. The rippling sound cuts through the eerie silence of the night as he too stands, his movements fluid and graceful. He closes the distance between them, slips his hand around her waist.

"And who says I'm going to let you go?" he murmurs, that sickening grin never leaving his face.

"Who says I'm going to let you keep me?" she counters, wiggling out of his grasp – surprisingly, he lets her, stepping away with gleaming eyes.

"You have for so long." He's not mocking her. He's simply telling the truth, and that's what hurts the most. "Things aren't going to change now, and you know it, my dear."

She acts without thinking; before either of them can understand what's happening, she runs and hurls herself into the car, shutting the door with so much force she feels the whole vehicle quake. She can see his face from the rear view mirror; eyes wide and disbelieving, smile turning into a snarl as realization dawns on him.

She starts the car, shutting her ears to his yells, and before she knows it he's nothing but an inconsequential dot on the dark horizon.

She fumbles around for his phone, and when she finds it she calls Jane, already having constructed a perfectly believable abduction story to tell him.

She drives through the night, and she can't help but laugh (but quickly she finds out that she does have more tears to shed after all).

* * *

His hand is at her throat. There will be purple bruises left by his fingers squeezing in the morning, and she briefly wonders how she's going to conceal them this time. Maybe she'll just have to avoid everyone for a while.

Uneasiness eats away at her gut, and spite burns white hot in her veins. She is consumed by the perpetual war of horror and hate, while he is somewhere between ravenous and lustful. They are nothing but a mess of limbs overtaken by things they cannot subdue or control, and all she can think is 'This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong'.

But since when has wrong ever mattered to people like them? It did once, she tries to remind herself. It mattered, back when she was still the fair and staunch officer of the law, devoted to her job and believing that she could make the world a better place.

It mattered once, it must have. But not any more.

Still, one has to draw the line somewhere, right?

Red John always seemed like the right place to draw the line (but then he comes and sets her on fire with all those heightened emotions, dragging her innocence out kicking and screaming because he likes it better when she's her old, valiant and benevolent self).

Fuck.

Teresa wants to dig her nails into his eye sockets and watch him cry blood. She wants to cut him open and drain him like he has done to so many people (like he once wanted to do to her). She wants to watch him die at her feet and laugh through it. She wants freedom. She wants to remember what it is like to be alive (for over a decade she had convinced herself that's how Jane makes her feel, but then came Red John, Red John, _Red John_ who scares her back to the pitiful slip of a girl who was foolish enough to think she was in love).

There's a fine line between love and hate, something she (because of Jane) has always sworn by. It stings like the back of his hand when he hits her and she whispers, "I hate you," while he kisses her and she scratches him and he laughs.

"Trust me, hate and love are exactly the same thing."

Damn, why do the three of them have to think so much alike? Perhaps it's how monsters begot by monsters think. She, Jane, Red John, they're just part of a vicious circle (and she takes a sickening pleasure out of thinking that she's pretty much the only female in this twisted game they play).

She was once naïve enough to think that she could save the destroyed man she met in the CBI bullpen all those years ago, that she could reach out and help him out of the merciless hell he'd thrown himself into.

She only realized Jane was the one who broke her when she finally met the one who broke him.

Demons spawn demons, madness breeds madness, hate dances close with love and she's caught up somewhere in the mess so full of both that she doesn't even know the fucking difference anymore. At the end of the day it probably doesn't matter. But the end of the day is a long time away for them.

Or at least that's what they tell themselves.

Except his hand is at her throat, and she's wearing bruises when she normally doesn't feel a thing. The thought of a knife driving through his heart, deep enough to kill him, almost makes her cry out in bliss, and probably he's mistaking the sudden look of ecstasy on her face for something he caused her to feel with his purposefully brutal ministrations.

Let him think that, while she thinks of him choking on his own blood.

Too bad it'll probably never happen.

Too bad, because she's back in his arms, and he's back in hers, and eventually he's going to kill her.

But thankfully she's passed the goddamned 'Kill me now or let me go' mentality, because the longer she's alive, the more chances she has to get away and live some more before he finds her again (and possibly kills her that time or gives her opportunity after opportunity to run again). She and Jane still haven't been to Hawaii or Japan or Arabia as a whole. They should take more exotic vacations the next time she manages to slip away.

His lips are on hers, his hand slowly leaving her neck, and now that she's done shuddering in half-ruined pleasure, he hoists her up and, as always, wants (demands) more.

Bastard. She really hates him.

But then he moves his mouth to her throat and teeth replace fingers in an instant. There's a threat – he's pressing them so hard she can feel the tips almost breaking through her skin, and she wonders how long it will take until she feels the familiar, warm rivulets running down her neck.

Maybe she'll die without seeing the rest of the world after all.

Her nerves are on fire, and she could scream or hyperventilate – but she won't give him the satisfaction. She's done it once, twice, but never again. To her mild surprise (she is too far gone for shame) her body ignores the fear that's twisting knots around the rebuilding heat of need in her belly and arches against his. She moans, because she's scared and disgusted and frustrated and wishes he'd make up his damn mind while hoping it takes him forever to make the choice that she knows he will forever regret.

"What would you do without me, love?" he whispers, dragging his mouth from her neck to her ear, kissing and biting and breathing hard against her skin.

The sad truth is, she doesn't know (she's survived far too long with him around, life without him seems like a secret dream she will never realize).

Still, she answers with a breathless groan, "I'd love to know."

He merely laughs and pushes her back onto the bed.

He looks down at her like he wants her dead and buried, or maybe he wants to devour her whole, or maybe he just wants to rip her open and memorize her inside out.

She pulls his face to hers and bites more than she kisses, her teeth tugging at his lips and finally drawing blood (and she closes her eyes, moaning as the metallic taste fills her mouth, because she wants him dead and buried, she wants to devour him whole – she wants to rip him open so she can memorize him inside out).

His hands slide over her skin and settle against her hips, to leave their intricate marks there so they'll match her neck, and the anxiety and the hatred and the lust all wreathe together, a twisted aching that he somehow forces her to feel. He's nothing but hell, merciless and consuming, but she's always been dancing in flames.

Teresa hates him, she really does.

She probably hates them both.

But Jane is forever clinging to her – his own personal savior from Heaven with the clipped wings and the crumpled halo.

And Red John would be indifferent to her if not for her penchant of finding ways to make him hate her back.

There's a small part of her, smug and selfish and incredibly stupid, that takes pride in the fact that as much as Red John obsesses over Jane, of the two partners it's always been her that really drives him wild. The two men can play cat and mouse all they want, but she'll always be the one who outsmarted him all on her own, the one who ruined his plans, the one who's seen him bruised and bleeding on his knees.

The one whom he will either kill and laugh as he does it, or die protecting.

And it makes the indignity and shame and anger of falling apart in his arms, while he comes apart as well and cradles her through it like a compassionate lover just to spite her, a little less brutal.

He won't kill her tonight, she can tell, for he closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep with a contented half-smile on his face, his chest rising and falling rhythmically beside her.

He looks almost innocent. Almost harmless.

He's so sure she won't kill him in his sleep. She can't resist the urge to laugh softly as she stands, her legs wobbly and her whole body aching. She knows where he keeps his blades, and it's a matter of minutes before she's run downstairs and grabbed one, before she's back in the bedroom and kneeling next to his sleeping form on the mattress, her fingers tight around the cool handle.

She tilts her head to the side, and she thinks. She won't kill him tonight after all, so perhaps tomorrow she'll find something he holds valuable and run with it (maybe for a day, maybe for a decade, until another opportunity for one of them to die arises).

Maybe she'll take Jane with her as well, because it would break him if she left him now. She almost smiles at the thought – Red Riding Hood and her lover running from the big, bad wolf.

Only the lover would think that the beast is dead.

She leaves at the first crack of dawn, not sparing her wolf another glance.

Her shabby motel room is dark and silent when she quietly slips back in, throwing her handbag to the floor before stepping into the bathroom. Her phone rings while she's in the shower, and she ignores it, but she can't ignore the nine missed calls that glare at her through the screen when she's back in her clothes and preparing herself for another day.

With a sigh, she calls him back.

"Teresa, I thought someone had abducted you," he says as soon as he picks up his phone. There's joviality in his voice, but there's also relief that she simply can't ignore.

She leans against the wall, resting her head on the cold surface and closing her eyes.

"I'm just fine, Jane. You should really stop worrying about me all the time – I know how to take care of myself."

* * *

There's blood on her hands when she comes in.

He's just come out of the kitchen, his sleeves rolled up, a small stain of olive oil on the front of his shirt. He's grinning, eyes bright as he goes to greet her – and freezes in the middle of their small living room at the sight of the crimson color smeared across her pale skin.

She locks the door; twisting the rusty doorknob until it won't turn anymore, her breathing labored, her stare wild. She doesn't look at him, not yet. Silent and trembling, she moves to the window on wobbly legs. Her forehead leans against the coolness of the glass. Her eyes are only half closed, with deep purple shadows underneath.

"Teresa?"

His voice comes out weak and tremulous, only barely audible in the quiet of the house. He stands, unmoving, his mind working frantically and his heart hammering against his chest.

He's never seen her like this. He's seen her impetuous for their friends' deaths. He's seen her weeping with her face buried in her hands. He's seen her scared of him simply looking at her. He's seen her numb at his touch, and he's seen her trying to respond without any real will to.

But never like this. He's never seen this.

There's blood on her hands. There's blood on the lock now – ruby red on dirty metal.

She still doesn't look at him. She doesn't respond, and those half-closed eyes are staring out the window. Her dark hair is falling in front of her face, rough and unkempt, but she makes no move to brush it away. Her reflection is staring back at her through the glass, and she swallows.

"Teresa?"

This time, his voice is louder – firmer, and he takes a hesitant step closer to her. He wants to gather her in his arms and comfort her, but he doesn't know what the hell has happened, how all this blood got on her hands.

She draws a long breath, and the words she speaks next stab through her like a knife.

"It didn't work."

He pauses, three feet away, but he isn't sure they're even in the same room together. He tries his mightiest to understand, he racks his brains to remember anything she might have said to indicate where she's been.

"What didn't work?"

She doesn't answer. She's moving, finally, turning towards him. Her eyes are open now, paranoia replaced by despair. Her pupils are dilated, black ink swallowing the emerald of her hopeless stare. She's looking at him and straight through, and he can't see anything except for the blood trickling down her skin and soaking her shirt.

He can hear his own heart thumping wildly, the only sound besides the faint flickering of the lamp above them.

"Teresa, what happened?"

She blinks her darkened eyes, dazed, and walks right by him. She doesn't even hear; she's somewhere far away, and he isn't sure he'll get her back this time.

He always gets her back though. He's supposed to always get her back. Isn't he?

Till death do them part – but has she already died? She heads to the bathroom, her footfalls on the wooden floorboards making him wince at every step she takes, and doesn't lock that door.

He stares at the other door, bolted shut, and the drying smudges of red turning brown on the metal handle. He gulps and sweats and shivers. And makes up his mind. He knows it's a stupid decision (because if she doesn't want him around her now, he'll probably end up bleeding himself), but he's made plenty of those.

She's undressed by the time he enters; the water's already running, she's waiting for it to warm up. There's blood everywhere, but only one wound, right below her ribcage – his breathing stops for a second when he realizes it's a stab wound. A decade with law enforcement has taught him how to discern lacerations, and this one's all too distinct.

It takes him only a few seconds to conjure the image, play the scene in his mind; someone stabbed her and cut across the skin, before she managed to fend them off.

She sees him staring, and a visible shudder runs down her spine. He can't tell if it's from the coldness of the bathroom or something else entirely.

"Teresa," he starts again, his tone now pleading as he walks up to her. His hands stay at his sides, he's still afraid to reach out and touch her, afraid she might break.

"It didn't work," she repeats for what feels like the dozenth time that night, shaking her head furiously. "He got away. I had him, he was almost dead, but-"

She doesn't finish her sentence, and he'll never know what she was intent on saying. Sniffing, she reaches inside the bathtub, tests the water. He knows it must be scalding hot – vapors of water are filling the small bathroom, clinging to their skin and hair and steaming up the mirror.

He expects her to pull back, burned, but she steps fully inside, until she's standing in the tub and he can see the sweat and water and blood mingling together as they run down her pale skin in swirling rivers.

"You need a doctor," he chokes out, finally, closing the distance between them.

Her eyes hold such desperation, such anguish, that he wants to close his own and forget he ever saw this.

"I don't," she says faintly, lowering herself into the water (and the colorless liquid turns pink, then blood-red).

"Teresa, please." He's begging now, his movements frantic as he kneels down beside the bathtub and reaches inside.

She swats his hand away when he tries to touch her. His heart sinks even further, and he reaches back inside, trying to wind his arms around her frail body and pull her out with him.

She slaps him hard, hard enough that he stumbles and nearly topples over to the ground. Her eyes are blazing, her chest rising and falling with each labored breath, and she tries to slap him again.

This time he grabs her arm, and then the other when she raises it, holding her wrists tight despite hating himself for doing so. And she cries.

Tears are streaming down her flushed face and he pulls her to him, holds her; she holds him back, like he's wanted her to for months.

"We'll stay here," she murmurs after she's calmed down, and he can only nod against her hair, because he knows he will be able to take her to a doctor only if she thinks he's actually agreed not to do anything.

He doesn't know how long they stay like this, their arms wrapped around each other, she bathing in blood and water, he kneeling by her side.

It feels like a decade has passed when she speaks.

"It's his, most of it," she says, her voice a haunted whisper. At the sight of his puzzled expression she almost chuckles. "The blood," she explains.

He stares at her. Not understanding, and he simply can't remember an instance when this has happened before.

"Whose?"

She frowns. "His," she repeats, as if trying to explain something ridiculously simple to a particularly thick-headed child. Then, she sighs. "But he got away. Lucky bastard. He always has been."

He still doesn't understand – but there's a voice, small and unwelcome, that whispers things he tries with all his might to ignore. And maybe he does understand after all.

But he doesn't want to.

"Teresa," he breathes, his hand cupping her cheek. Red water splashes around the bathtub when she shifts, leaning into his touch. "Teresa, please. Please, tell me what happened."

Instead of answering, she leans over the white marble and her hands fumble with the pair of jeans she threw on the tiled floor earlier. His eye catches a flash of lamplight reflected on a steel blade, and his heart misses a beat.

Dried blood is covering most of the gleaming surface and its handle, and she runs a trembling finger over it, slowly, her eyes filled with awe and disgust. She doesn't need to say anything, not now.

He would have recognized the blade anywhere. Anywhere in the world. Anywhere in time.

With great difficulty he manages to tear his gaze away from it and back to her face.

"That's all done," he says, his voice strained, his hands shaking. "It's over. He's dead. I killed him."

"No," she whispers. Her hand falls to her side, and the blade disappears beneath the crimson surface of the water. He wonders if she's still bleeding. "You never did."

He shakes his head, and it all comes rushing back – the basement, dark and humid and suffocating. His hands, holding a knife that shook as they trembled violently. The body, lying lifeless in a pool of blood on the cold floor (the madman's laughter still echoing in his head as he stared down at the corpse).

He hadn't been wrong that time. He'd killed him. It was over with. It was done.

She looks at him, hurt and anger and desperation written clearly across her face, and he knows he had been wrong yet again.

He almost screams.

Her hands go to his shoulders, and he doesn't fight her like he knows he probably should. He doesn't fight her when she kisses him and spreads blood across his face, when she rips at his clothes and bites his neck hard enough to make him wince.

He just helps her instead, helps her with the bastard's blood on his face and her tears on his chest. He doesn't push her away when she drags him into the bathtub, her anguish and despair giving her strength he knows she normally wouldn't have. She kisses him harder than she ever has, her lips roaming over his neck and face before pressing roughly against his own.

She's panting, eyes wide and rabid again; there's still blood on her hands, and now some of it is his as she bites to break the skin. She's desperate and unforgiving – and that is when he knows, he knows that's how she fucks _him_.

He wants to scream again, he wants to cry, but he doesn't. It hurts, it burns more than hell, and it's a relief at the same time. It's ugly, and he's almost ashamed.

It's awful, but she's still holding him like he really matters.

"I can't take it anymore," she says, but she's already on top of him, scratching and biting like she has the right to be angry with him. He fights back tears, and wraps his arms around her, pain and relief battling each other and he doesn't know what to feel.

"I can't take it anymore."

She's shouting, and they're both losing whatever's left of their minds – but they don't stop, they kiss and moan and growl, because there's nothing else left to do. Not anymore.

"One of us was going to die," she pants. "That's how it was supposed to happen. One of us should be dead, but he's run away and I'm here, and we're both alive. And you're alive."

She's rambling, and he doesn't want to make sense of it.

She cradles his head in her hands as she starts moving faster, harder, her eyes boring into his, glistening with tears. He can't fight it anymore and he cries out, caught between sobbing and laughing.

Her hand leaves his face and disappears under the water – she's holding something when it comes back out, but he can't make out its shape nor its color. Everything's a blur that he can't fight, the world around him fading to thin red lines against the pallor of her skin.

It's sinking in that something's very wrong. He's fading. He can't feel much anymore, and he can barely feel her. There's a sharp pain somewhere, but he can't focus. He gazes up at her, into her beautiful emerald eyes.

"Forgive me," she sobs.

It's a bloodbath in the house when the bathroom door opens again in the morning, and the maid screams in horror at the sight before her.

Many miles away, a man sits crumpled before a small TV screen, his hand still clutching at the bandaged wound on his neck as he watches a reporter inform the viewers about the horrendous crime that took place in a small working-class neighborhood last night – and he doesn't know whether he should smile or growl in frustration. It shouldn't be over so soon.

He looks up at the creaking sound the front door makes as it opens, his brows knitting together in confusion.

There's blood on her hands when she comes in.


End file.
